OECD corporate guidelines were partly authored in response to UN pressures

Evidence

One concrete outcome of the work done by the UN on multinationals is the impetus it provided for similar exercises. At the same time that the Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations was being negotiated, UNCTAD was pursuing two other, more specific projects: the International Code of Conduct on the Transfer of Technology (begun in 1978 and abandoned in the early 1990s) and the Set of Multilaterally Agreed Equitable Principles and Rules for the Control of Restrictive Business Practices (adopted in 1980). Perhaps even more notable was the decision taken by the OECD to pursue its own code project, resulting in the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, which were adopted by member governments in 1976. This set of recommendations, which encourage multinationals to observe the policies of host country governments, was formulated not long after the UNCTC began its work on a Code of Conduct. Although the OECD guidelines differ in important respects from the UN draft code, there were several meetings between staff members at the UNCTC and the OECD in which ideas and information were exchanged. Even if the OECD project can, and to some extent should, be seen as an attempt to co-opt the UNCTC’s work in this area, it is doubtful that the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises would have been developed and adopted as rapidly without the pressure created by the United Nations’ parallel efforts. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1799

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the wider history of how Northern institutions co-opt Southern-led regulatory initiatives, parallel to neoliberal thinkers’ reworking of social democratic ideas.
• ADDENDUM: Could support ‘Grafting & Growth’ as an example of institutional borrowing, though tangentially.